Page 51 of Stella is Starting Over

He kisses me again and the raging arousal is back, instantly. Then he’s gone, and I can’t face the hunt for a vibrator; I’m face down on the sofa with my hand between my legs within seconds of him leaving. I’ve almost certainly come before he’s got his seatbelt on. Afterwards, I lock eyes with a Peppa Pig stuffed toy, lying on the floor, looking mournfully at me. ‘Sorry you had to see that,’ I say. Time for bed.

Dominic

Have you ever watched one of those films, intended to be amusing, where the main character makes a series of agonising blunders while you’re shouting, ‘No one would ever do that, you fucking idiot,’ and it makes the whole thing borderline unwatchable? That’s exactly what’s happened in my real life this week. On Tuesday I realised that it was Stella’s kid’s first birthday party on Saturday afternoon. And while I don’t have any huge yen to hang out with a baby, I haven’t seen Stella much since our night at hers and I miss her. She’s been half-hearted over messages and I want to catch up. Plus she’s about to go back to work so who knows when she’ll be around to hang out again, and I want to see if her sister is as great as she sounds because maybe that’ll be the one woman who can convert me to commitment. (Joking, mostly.) So, I write STELLA BIRTHDAY PARTY on a Post-it and put it on my fridge, which functions as my diary.

On Wednesday, Florrie came over. You can see where this is going, I’m sure. She arrived on my doorstep carrying a bunch of tiny white flowers, wearing denim shorts so short that they were basically pants, and I almost melted. We went inside and shagged for two hours, at which point she was understandably parched and went to the fridge to get a bottle of water, while I was half asleep and gloriously post-coital.

She came back to bed and slid herself under my arm, breathing gently, smelling like maple syrup and vanilla. ‘When’s Stella’s party?’ she asks.

If she had asked literally any other question, I could have got out of it. What kind of party? Where’s Stella’s party? Is it Stella’s birthday party? Any of those, easy. But when is a complete nightmare. I rack my brains trying to work out whether there’s a day she’s mentioned some unmissable plan so that I can pretend I think it’s then, and then backtrack later. But with Florrie, nothing’s ever concrete – she’s a human manifestation of a summer breeze.

‘It’s on Saturday,’ I say, my chest contracting.

Florrie says nothing. She’s not stupid. I mean she’s literally not stupid, she’s got a degree in French and Spanish from UCL, but she also takes courses in psychology from the Yale distance learning program and reads lots of books about how people’s brains work so I assume she knows that silence is a powerful tool. I also know that silence is a powerful tool and yet it works on me, completely.

‘It’s on Saturday,’ I say, the words spilling out. ‘It’s not her party, it’s actually for her daughter.’

‘She has a daughter?’

‘Yes,’ I say, realising that I’ve been really very parsimonious with the data. ‘She’s called Rose and she’s going to be one on Saturday.’

Florrie wrinkles her nose. ‘And you’re going to the party?’

‘She’s having a load of friends along; first birthday parties are usually more about the parents than the kids, honestly.’

‘Oh,’ she says. And then she asks the question that I knew she was going to ask, that I was completely and utterly dreading. ‘Can I come?’

I try to say no. In fact, I do say no. The first thing I say is, ‘No! Florrie, you’ll hate it. You’re far too. . .’ And then I trail off, trying to find a better word than ‘cool’, and totally fail. ‘It’s not your scene,’ I venture. ‘You don’t seriously want to go to a kids’ party?’

I realise that asking the question is my major mistake, because now I’ve basically given her the option.

‘I want to go where you go.’ She smiles, running her hands over my chest. This obviously isn’t really true because she wanted to go to a squat rave last week where I very much wasn’t. But there’s clearly no way through this. I’m going to have to say yes, then just cancel at the last minute.

‘Sure,’ I say, my voice several pitches higher than usual. ‘That would be great.’

To make things worse, my cancelling-last-minute plan is scuppered when she stays over the night before and wakes up next to me. I consider suggesting that we sack the party off, but that would let Stella down. And I consider faking an illness, but that’s getting into a new frontier of deceit that I just can’t bring myself to broach. So that’s how I found myself in the back of an Uber, Florrie wearing a sheer, pink cotton dress, which entirely shows both of her nipples, me holding a huge, pink unicorn toy with a bow on it.

‘Hey,’ I say, as we turn onto Stella’s street and I’ve left it until the absolute last possible moment. ‘Just to say, I don’t think her friends and family know that we’re occasionally. . .’ I search for the word. ‘I think her friends and her family think she’s not. . .’ I’m really hoping Florrie is going to jump in at some point. ‘No one knows that she’s been seeing me, so can we just keep things really light and not mention it?’

Florrie looks worried. ‘That’s so sad. Why don’t her family know?’

‘Because she’s just had a baby and she doesn’t want them judging her for getting laid, I’d imagine.’

She looks even more worried. ‘I really don’t like bringing deception into my dynamics.’

‘I know that,’ I say, as we pull up outside the house. There are balloons on the door and the front lawn has been mown. She must have hired a gardener. I’d have done that for her, if she’d asked. ‘’I know that,’ I say, feeling like I’m negotiating with a terrorist. ‘But we have to do no harm, right? Our dynamic has to stay transparent, but she hasn’t consented to being outed as open, so we should respect that, right?’

Using ethical non-monogamy babble seems to work so those TikToks I watched have clearly paid off.

‘You’re right,’ she says. ‘We should uphold her right to disclose as she feels ready.’

I breathe a sigh of relief and tap my phone to give the driver a massive tip as we approach the door.

‘Dom!’ Stella says, opening the door, obviously shocked to see us. She’s wearing a blue dress and she’s got Rose on her hip. Rose looks bigger. How can she be that much bigger in six weeks? ‘Hello!’ she adds, obviously trying to pretend that she knew I was coming. ‘And this must be Florrie?’

Her recall is impressive. She goes to give Florrie a hug, and Florrie half flinches as Rose reaches out one, probably sticky, hand to touch her hair.

‘Baby!’ Rose says.